


Someone To Pull Me Under

by paintingfire



Category: X Factor RPF
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Friendship/Love, M/M, Questioning, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintingfire/pseuds/paintingfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The silence was back. This time though Matt was staring into Ali's eyes just begging him for an answer. He knew he'd lost it but that was just it. Maybe he was lost.</i></p><p><i>"I'm serious, man. What's wrong with me, Ali? Why can't I just be happy and sing my songs. I'm not even happy singing other people's songs any more. I can't relate to any of them any more. Maybe I never could, but now it's as if the words are coming out half-formed. It's like the light has gone out. I'm just lying all the time."</i></p><p><i>Ali shifted in his chair, started flicking his fingers to fire the grains on the countertop towards Matt as if he was trying to score a goal, and maybe he was. Maybe he was.</i></p><p><i>"Okay Matt, you brought it up, let's talk about it."</i></p><p>A year on from winning the X Factor. A conversation between Matt and Ali about connections and disconnections, singing girls songs and accepting that sometimes labels mean nothing at all. But most of all, about love and acceptance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someone To Pull Me Under

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a story with Matt opening up, but somehow as I wrote it Ali just took over. He could say out loud what Matt knew but was struggling with. If a character is being that forceful who am I to deny them!
> 
> Written as a fill for the following LJ meme prompt:
> 
>  _"Ali questioning why Matt doesn't bother changing the sex of people in songs._   
> _maybe teasing him a bit on the way he sings about guys._   
> _(especially seeing as he sang i fell in love with a girl and kept the lyrics as boy...and one line says "Sarah's said it's cool, she don't consider it cheating")_   
> _I like the idea of Matt keeping his feelings bottled up, other than in the songs he sings._   
> _sorry this might sound confusing. but i'd love for it to be written. <3_
> 
> I'm nowhere near happy with it (maybe because I don't think anyone can do the sheer complex simplicity of Matt Cardle justice - the man is an enigma, yet not IMHO), but am letting it go for the moment. May revisit it some day and truly try to write it from Matt's perspective.
> 
> Title is, of course, taken from Matt's "Pull Me Under".
> 
> Disclaimer: I am a mere storyteller, a painter of words. I have no secret mind-reading powers. The characterisations of the people and portrayal of events within the following story are therefore wholly fictitious. A fairytale begins "Once upon a time" but it does not mean it really happened. Remember that and we'll all live happily ever after!

  
It'd been ten minutes since Matt had become uncharacteristically quiet, and Ali McMillan had been trying everything to distract him. The usual silliness and busking with the cutlery not working with the man who could normally be relied on to have the concentration of a fruit fly when they were together. That was one of the best things about their friendship, Matt's enthusiasm brightened Ali's day, a guaranteed laugh a minute. That and the fact that Matt was so intensely giving. He somehow just made Ali feel better, feel cared for, no matter what. They had an easy friendship, knew how to pass the ball back and forth, reading each other's moods. Okay, yes, they often wanted to strangle each other, but in a good way. A very good way.

And because he knew Matt so well he knew this wasn't the normal comfortable silence between long time friends. No, Ali realised this was the type of silence that people wanted to break but couldn't. It was just so unusual to feel it engulfing him and Matt, because normally when Matt was on a downer he'd spill his frustrations and get angry in the only way Matt knew how. By letting sarcastic humour slice through his doubts, and Ali always admired this in him. Matt would just kind of shake himself and say he'd learn from this, he'd do it better next time.

But Ali only admired that particular strand of Cardle determination so far, because while it did seem to reap dividends Matt never seemed to know how to stop and just breathe, to just be thankful for what he already had. Ali knew every sign, every bow of the head, every tense body movement. The man was kicking himself when he was down, but the only reason he was down there still looking up for the stars was because he'd let himself fall.

And what did best friends do in such a situation? They reached down and helped each other up - and maybe made them open their eyes when they wanted to keep them shuttered.

=+=

Ali drummed his fingers, a questioning rattle that finally seemed to cut a chink in the glass wall that Matt had retreated behind once more.

"I don't understand it, Ali. I just..." Matt traced a question mark in the white grains on the countertop and sighed. "I thought it would be enough, you know? But instead it's like it never happened. Something's still missing. I thought I'd find it, but..."

No harm in trying one last chance at their usual humour.

"Hold it right there. Perfect! Now this is how I'll make my fortune. Sell it to the highest bidder. Matt Cardle's drug of choice. Allow me to feed your habit a bit more so I can take a photo".

Ali shook the bag high above their heads, and for some small moment Matt was transported back to just after he won the X Factor and that final performance, glitter paper falling around him and white before his eyes, under his fingertips... He swept the memory to the side, something he'd been trying to do a lot lately. And failing.

"And here I thought you came down to cheer me up, not set me up?" Matt smiled at Ali but instead of the usual teasing tone that would have normally encouraged even sillier behaviour his voice now sounded oddly flat. He could hear it himself. Hell, truth be told, his _life_ was oddly flat at the moment. Flat, lacking in "glitter". Everyone, not least himself - especially himself - kept expecting him to be walking on clouds, living the dream... but instead he seemed to be desperately reaching for something to anchor himself to while he was being swept away in a tide of nothingness.

Matt's hand was gripping the edge of the counter so hard that Ali could count the veins standing out on it. Fuck, his hand was even trembling a little, the stupid twat might even be on the verge of tears. Yeah, this was different. Matt could be over emotional sometimes, but when probed he normally didn't find it that hard to tell people why. This really was different.

Ali ran his hands across his scalp, holding on to his hair for a moment as if forcing himself to nod and say, yes, this was the time that some sort of escape hatch, at least, needed to be cut through that protective glass. If Matt couldn't even let Ali in, then, well...

He swallowed and then smiled. Putting on a new persona, mentally role playing instead of actually acting out an over the top version as he normally would with Matt, silly voice and all. Forever two kids playing dress-up without the need for costumes.

No, this internal voice was a serious one. Dr Ali was in the house, and he knew how to draw Matt out, even if he'd somehow - if he was honest with himself - been nervous about doing it before. Course it would help set the mood if Matt was lying on the couch rather than perched on a bar stool, but Ali knew he couldn't have everything.

"Maybe that's a good thing, Matt. To realise that."

Ali reached across to his friend and gently let his fingers play on Matt's wrist, hoping the contact would soothe the jittery trembling.

"You give so much of yourself to others, Matt, to your friends and family."

His voice stumbled, searched, then found himself repeating words he'd heard from Matt's own lips.

"You'd die for them, but what do you really take just for yourself? Who do you really let in to do the same for you? You need to be selfish sometimes."

"But I am selfish Ali, I went in to the competition as me. No Seven Summers, no Darwyn, no nothing."

Matt kicked away from the counter and got up and started pacing, muttering half to himself and half to Ali. About maybe that he deserved to feel like this, that it was own fault, that he always knew he couldn't do things alone. He wanted to, he wanted to feel free like he did when he was on his skateboard, but the problem was that when he stepped off he realised he wanted gravity to hold him still too. He just didn't know how to cling on to the ground long enough to feel free there too.

"Matt!" Ali angled the abandoned stool and simply pointed, smiling to himself when Matt just came and sat down again as if he was some highly-trained pet who did what he was told without thinking. Oh if only he would act without thinking, or even think without acting the goat, thought Ali. Then maybe Matt wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe they all wouldn't now be in this mess of frustrated feelings.

"We _all_ discussed this before you went into the competition, remember? I still think you made the right decision, Matt. You won the fucking thing, you won your chance. It's now up to you to make of it what you will. Not anyone else. You, Matt."

"But it's like it's stolen something from me".

Yeah, stolen my fucking sanity and hung me out to dry. Matt blew out his frustrations, watching the white grains dance and settle again. He did it again, sending some down onto the floor in a huff.

"It's not the same any more when I perform. It's like I nearly finally managed to grab onto something special during the show and now I can't find it anymore. Not even in the recording studio. I've lost the connection with the words, with the audience, with the song..."

"So what is the difference, Matt? What's really the difference. Was it because you were being put on the spot, because you were competing?"

"No, no. It's not that. I'm missing something from before as well. Hell, I don't know, Ali. You tell me. What changed? What am I doing that's so very different? Maybe I'm really just not good enough."

"Maybe it wasn't the competition Matt, but the support you had, the people around you. Maybe that's who you were trying to win over, to connect with".

Ali dropped his eyes, suddenly nervous about the thoughts he might see pass over Matt's eyes:

"Are you missing the camera lens? Who were you singing to that isn't there now, what was down the other side of the lens, waiting for you backstage?"

"But I don't need that, Ali"

Matt's voice was rising in desperation as if trying to escape from something he didn't quite understand.

"I don't, I didn't, need.."

But Ali cut off the disjointed response in frustration. Yeah, sometimes honesty was the best policy. Sometimes.

"Matt, you're one of the most needy people I know. You look as if you're going to crawl into the people you're talking to sometimes. As if you need their outer shell to protect you from something. Or perhaps you just want to absorb them, make them part of you so you'll never lose them."

"Fuck off, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about why I can't relate to my fucking album, and my fucking songs, and my fucking gigs, and my fucking interviews, and my big fat empty fucking life!"

Matt hammered his fist off the table and glared at Ali, not really taking in what he'd actually said.

The silence was back. This time though Matt was staring into Ali's eyes just begging him for an answer. He knew he'd lost it but that was just it. Maybe he _was_ lost.

"I'm serious, man. What's wrong with me, Ali? Why can't I just be happy and sing my songs. I'm not even happy singing other people's songs any more. I can't relate to any of them any more. Maybe I never could, but now it's as if the words are coming out half-formed. It's like the light has gone out. I'm just lying all the time."

Ali shifted in his chair, started flicking his fingers to fire the grains on the countertop towards Matt as if he was trying to score a goal, and maybe he was. Maybe he was.

"Okay Matt, you brought it up, let's talk about it."

He drew out the words, treading carefully, once again not sure if he was brave enough to carry on meeting Matt's eyes.

"This business of relating, before the X Factor and during it. I've always wanted to know something. To know why. Why have you never changed the lyrics, changed the pronouns, sung about the girl, when you're singing a girls song? Why did you never make it your song? Hell..." he laughed softly "why sing those songs in the first place. You don't need to sing every note as if someone is gripping your testicles in a vice, for fucks sake. I don't think the X Factor audience was primarily made up of millions of mutts who wanted to howl along with you."

Matt smiled at the thought, but tried to ignore confusion beating in his chest the second that he realised where Ali was going to with this. "It doesn't need changed, Ali, it's not about the lyrics it's about the song." There, that would stop this line of questioning, wouldn't it? He wasn't lying after all, that's what he felt.

"Matt," Ali's voice had now taken on a patient tone, as if he was explaining their own actions to a child, and in some ways that was what Matt was. Forever a teenage boy trying to find his place in the world.

"A song's got words. Yes music connects with us, a drum beat is like a heart beat to me, the connection's always there, you know that. But you know when you've got that connection with an audience, it's not just the music, the notes coming from your mouth Matt, it's what you're singing, how you're singing it. The emotion that you're investing in the words that are coming out of your mouth. That's what's special, that's what sets it apart. The thing is Matt, you do connect, really connect in a way that's quite unique; or you did. I just wonder how can you really feel that connection at your end when you're not singing about something that applies to you..."

Or are you? Matt could hear the unasked question echoing in his brain as clearly as if Ali had actually said the words to him. For some strange reason he began to feel he was blushing, and he didn't know why. Did he? Fuck!

"But it was just the X Factor, the song choices I had. Why should I change them, eh?" The defensive tone was causing the pitch of Matt's voice to rise again and the irony made Ali hastily cover his mouth in case he started grinning.

"There had been all the fuss the year before with Danyl, but it never occurred to me that the same applied to me. Because it didn't. It did. It wasn't the same. I don't think. It's the song, not the singer. Why should, why shouldn't I... I sing about girls the same way, I sing boy's songs. If I were a..." Matt was stumbling over his words and seemed to be having an argument with himself.

"Matt, it wasn't just the X Factor, you've done this before for a long time. You've always done it."

"But that's the version I like, that I..." his voice was catching, searching for answers.

It was stating the obvious, but Ali felt compelled to say it:

"It's the version you want to sing".

He said it as a statement but Matt only saw the question of his own face reflected in Ali's eyes.

"Because it's higher, it's in my key" Matt was not accepting the closed argument of Ali's response "It's higher, it's in my key, it suits my voice, it suits me!"

"But that's got nothing to do with it, Matt."

God, Ali didn't want to argue with the guy but the mere fact they were proved there was something worth arguing about. Matt cared about this too much.

"That's just the sound, the note, the pitch. Not the words, not the meaning. The thought or emotion that's in the words. That's a physical note, the sound, that's got nothing to do with who is singing that note and who they're singing it to. You know that, Matt."

Ali was getting more frustrated so he just let it continue to spill forth. After all this was the most animated Matt had been since he started on his woe-is-me downer, and apart from grabbing the guy by the shoulders, shaking him and then... well something had to get through to him.

"You don't just do it in songs you know. You've been doing it in interviews all the time. You did it again the other week, commenting about influences and saying how you've got to be careful about what you say and do because guys might looking up to you. Your fans. Come on man, you've won the flipping X Factor, the fans that come immediately to your mind should be screaming girls but what do you say? Boys, men! They interviewed you during the show about the changes when you go out in public, the fans jumping you and what's the example you give, you don't talk about girls chatting you up giving your number, no you talk about men perving on you, or whatever it was. Then there's when you explain your own lyrics, your own feelings, when nowadays you seem to have this strange compulsion to remind everyone you're talking about girls. You suddenly care too much about something that it wouldn't have occurred to you to make a fuss about before."

And Matt was off the stool again, pacing again. Ignoring, or choosing to ignore, the more personal direction Ali had taken the discussion.

"But I respect songwriters, what they write is what should be performed."

Fuck, he's still on about the bloody song not the singer. God, he loved the guy but sometimes Ali felt like punching him. Instead he made do with getting up and literally backing Matt into a corner. Blocking his escape route so he'd stop pacing like some caged animal in a zoo.

"So you want be true to the original, how something was created? Is that what you're saying? Well I call bullshit, Matt. If that was the case why sing a girl's version of a song that was originally written for and performed by a bloke. Why change that one? And it's not even just... For God's sake Matt looking back now do you not see it? 'I fell in love with a boy', the irony of lines like 'Sarah thinks it's alright'. Do you really not see it Matt. Matt..."

Ali reached out and grabbed Matt's arms, and then let his hands slide down to meet Matt's fisted ones.

"You're not... you're not a stupid guy. No matter how much you put yourself down. You're so emotional, you care so much..."

"And what's so awful about that, Ali." Matt almost spat at him "Am I meant to be made of fucking stone? Am I?"

Matt just groaned, feeling suddenly as if the fight had gone out of him and sank to the ground. Back to the fucking wall. And to think Ali was meant to be his friend.

Ali went to kneel down beside him and then thought better of it, sitting back in the stool but staying turned towards Matt.

"I don't know, Matt." His voice was almost a whisper, trying to calm the adrenalin pumping in his own veins.  

"I sometimes thought that you never even worry about that yourself, but you obviously do because you wouldn't be so defensive about it here with me now. You'd have laughed it off if someone asked about it on the show. Shrugged your shoulders, said so what? You don't judge. But yes Matt, you do. You judge yourself, all the time. What is.."

But Matt was just staring at the floor, hunched over, obviously not ready, or willing, to attempt answers. Ali wasn't giving up on this though, not giving up on him. Even if this was turning into the longest serious conversation they'd ever had. Even if it was a decidedly one-sided conversation, Ali doing all the work.

"Ahh, okay. Let's go back to the album then, this now so-called disappointment that you supposedly want to keep dissecting until there's nothing left.

You were so determined to not be compromised, so happy when the different deal was struck, adamant about putting out the album you wanted. You weren't going to be another cookie cutter winner, singing an album of unrelated songs that meant nothing to you. That had no hold on you, that didn't touch your soul in some way.

Tell me truthfully, have you put out the album you wanted to Matt? Is it really all your album? Letters from your heart not just words on a page. Yes, you've got original songs there but is it really what you wanted? Or is it full of half-baked lyrics because you just won't let yourself be and say what you really want to say? Because you and I know you can really feel other writers songs, why not your own?

Silence. Matt gulped, as if trying to form words and failing. Finally a sigh of frustration broke through but neither man knew who made it, maybe both of them did.

"Did they somehow clip your wings a bit, Matt?"

Ali chose to carry on, after all he'd gone far enough that there was no going back.

"Not let you fly in the way you wanted to? Or should that be drown?

And there's something else" and this time it was Ali swallowing, trying to find the words, seeing a puzzled face in his mind, a face that should be smiling but wasn't.

"Was it just a joke, a publicity stunt, or merely something to make him feel better?"

"What do you mean, who, what?"

But Matt was suddenly alive to the conversation again, his heartbeat started to go a little faster, panicky butterflies dancing counterpoint. He knew exactly what Ali was talking about. He didn't have to ask.

"All that talk about a duet with Aiden on your album. You kept saying it, bringing it up, no-one else did."

Matt knew that was the truth. It had in some small way seemed the easiest thing to think about when the reality of the album deal came up, about what exactly he wanted on there. As if the rest was somehow unimportant.

"But the journalists kept... the show producers, this whole bro..." Matt bit his tongue, the word he nearly uttered always left a bitter taste and wasn't he bitter enough these days? He knew he was smiling at himself, so shook the smile away. Something though compelled him to get up and go and sit down again beside Ali. As if, against his better judgement, he did want to acknowledge that he was listening to his friend.

"Matt, you brought it up when it didn't even matter, when it wasn't even relevant. You wanted to do that together. No question. So, why didn't you?"

Yeah, why didn't you, Matt? Because you're a fucking coward, that's why. He didn't say it though, just sat in silence and started drawing patterns with his finger again. Misty eyes failing to see what he couldn't say.

Was that not? Ali looked at the countertop and rolled his eyes. Teenage boy in a man's body indeed. He cleared his throat, and tried again.

"Forget about everything else, Matt. Just imagine. You know, okay. Psychiatrists couch. Close your eyes. Just say, just acknowledge what comes into your head straight away. What would it have been like to record with Aiden. To have that down, to actually lay down the track together, to know you could have been filming a video for it? To have somebody else there on stage performing with you. To look at. To make it real."

He spoke the next words carefully, speaking slowly as if that would make them sink into Matt's brain, past the emotional flood barriers that Matt seemed to have built to protect some part of himself.

"Would that have filled that missing space you've talked about?"

Ali paused for a moment, but Matt remained still. Well surely that was an improvement, surely it meant he was thinking about this.

"What would you have sung anyway, something original? Written it together? You talked about writing together. What would it have been about? You're so very close, it would have been special without a doubt."

"Not that close" the words dripped from Matt, sounding strangely despondent. Sounding like a lie. A lie that Ali needed to prove, but how? Then he remembered, going through to the lounge and searching through what Matt called his "Oh look at me, the big shot" pile. Discarding the promo CD's and the cutting books (Mama Cardle liking to do things the old fashioned way, and good for her!) he finally grasped what he was looking for.

Matt watched warily as Ali returned and sat down, and once again started feeling himself transported back in time.

"Matt, we danced around this before. There's a photo here, more candid than the others."

But Matt's not really listening, once again seeing white, panicked slightly at the feel of it around him, in front of his eyes, under his fingertips. Feeling skin. That's not the photo Ali means. He turns the book round on the table and the spine draws a pattern in the sugar grains splitting through the white, messing it up. He does it with the book closed, so it makes a line, it makes a divide, then it flaps open on the counter and some of the grains skitter round about it, some gust into the air and land on the page.

Ali is looking at the page that shows Matt with Aiden after the show with their group performance, wearing the poppies. They were just coming off stage with the other contestants and Aiden's looking relaxed and strong, in control, not the nervous person that he came over when performing solo. He's in charge, he's relaxed, he knows what he's doing, he's content in the moment. He's at ease because he's got his hand on Matt's hip, steadying them both, grounding themselves, without maybe even realising it. And Matt's face is in another place and he's just looked up right when he's in that place, and the camera has caught something. Something different, something personal, something real. A different kind of vulnerability. A million secrets in a look, perhaps even some secrets that Matt hasn't shared with himself, and in his heart he knows how it appears to someone like Ali who knows him so well. They'd all commented on it, even his family. That it somehow was very different from all the others, posed or un-posed, that were taken of him during the show. Of him and Aiden.

"Matt," Ali's voice was earnest, his smile gentle, a hand reaching out again "do you even know what was going through your head when that photograph was taken? Because it's the most raw looking thing I've ever seen. You're so exposed. It's as if you're calling out for something, that you're small and needing, but not needy at all in the same way as before. But on top of all that, the most over-riding expression in your eyes is that, for once, you're also at peace."

Ali knew he was sounding fanciful, romantic even, but he couldn't help it. If _that_ was the only way to describe them, it was what it was.

"As if Aiden's touch has rooted you, tethered you somehow, stopped you flying off who knows where. And that in that moment, though you're vulnerable, you know that you're safe. But you've looked up and you're not in your X Factor bubble, as you like to call it, you were in different kind of space and that photograph, the X Factor, was breaking in and seeing something."

His voice grew stronger, more insistent. "You saw the proofs of the books Matt, you approved that photo. You know how you look in it but you still let it be published, put it out there for everyone to see. A personal moment made public."

A slight tremble in his throat caused Ali to cough slightly before carrying on... "Were you trying to tell us something, mate?"

"I'm not gay." The words slipped so quietly between Matt's lips that Ali nearly didn't hear them, but he saw the defeated body language, the puzzled lines on Matt's brow.

"Hey, did I say you were?" Ali nudged his elbow, with a smile. "Who said anything about being gay, Matt? I didn't?"

"But..." now Matt was really confused and it showed. "But you've been going on about the songs, and about me and..." For some stupid reason Matt couldn't bring himself to say Aiden's name, he could feel wetness on his cheeks and realised he was crying. Again. Or lord, what on earth was wrong with him?

"What's wrong with me, Ali, what's so wrong with me? I don't know what I feel any more. I just feel. So much."

The last words were torn from Matt as if he couldn't take any more and it broke Ali's heart a little to hear the confusion and despair still playing out.

"Matt, if you've ever thought of me as a friend will you listen to me just now and accept some things. Maybe you need to open your eyes, replay some things from your life, really look at yourself. Thanks to being filmed for the show you've got something really valuable there in front of you if you'd only look for the answers. Look at your body language when you truly let your emotions sweep away any doubt, at just how open you really are.

You say you're not gay, and maybe you aren't. But maybe you're not straight either. Maybe not even bi. Maybe you're just yourself. I think perhaps you just love. You just love so much, in a different way from most of us. Unconditionally. I think that's why you connect with the songs regardless of the gender. It's just about loving. A person. A thing. There's no confusion in your heart until you start questioning it, because you think that's what's expected of you. That you have to question being different. That's the only reason you're lost.

Just don't forget the difference between loving friends and being in love, you need to recognise that. You can be _in_ love Matt. Just don't be afraid to acknowledge the difference that it is for you. You've got to decide what's really important to you, Matt. And sometimes, I think, all the smaller things just fall into place. Maybe not the place others think they should be but the place that's right, for you.

You still want to talk music, is that the only thing you think you understand? Well you've got to master your own album, Matt. Put all the different tracks in your life together and let them make sense for you, make them into something that flows your way. A whole that's yours to own. Not overproduced, but simple and clear and true. The lows have to be there as well as the highs, because that's how we need to live to experience emotions fully. Just stop being scared to acknowledge the highs. It doesn't matter what the words of your songs say, only that you own them."

A speechless, but thoughtful, Matt suddenly found himself engulfed in a massive bear hug as Ali planted a purposefully slobbering kiss on his cheek, the tension forcibly leaving the room as suddenly as it had entered earlier in the evening. Air rushing to once drowning lungs. The balance of their relationship suddenly rightened again. Lighthearted, not heavy.

"We love you too, Matt. Don't throw your life away because you can't fit yourself in a box of someone else's making. Labels mean fuck all in the bigger universe of things. You are what you are and you sure as fuck don't have to understand anyone else if the great big majority don't tick the same way you do. Now bugger off before you get me crying too, you great wuss!"

=+=  

One year on from winning the X Factor, if he can grab it and not let it go - white is truth. There's snow in the air as Matt walks, the lights around him giving it a strange silver hue as it cuts through his mind. The closer he gets to his destination the straighter he stands, the beat of his footsteps steadier, no longer erratic. For one moment he pauses, arm outstretched, his hand ghosting out in front of him, as if catching at someone, holding them close. He laughs, and ups his pace. Suddenly, finally, careless.

Back in Matt's flat Ali takes out his phone and takes a photo of the pile of sugar. The question mark, the heart. He hits a couple of buttons, types "He needs you" and sends it on it's way to where it belongs. To the number that's been on his own speed dial, as well as Matt's, for over a year. Then he lets his own finger trail round one of the indentations before smoothing it all out. A blank white canvas left in it's place, ready for Matt the next day.

Then he nods his head, gives a small smile, sighs and leaves.

Sometimes the sweetest thing about loving someone is knowing when to let go.

 _Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.  
\- Plato_

**Author's Note:**

> Got some nice feedback on the LJ comm for this one so posted this as a thankyou. Thought I might as well add it here too.
> 
> Just as a thankyou for the positive feedback thought I'd copy in my original notes for the ending for this fic. ~~Cue scary music as you see inside my brain~~ Skip beyond the break if you don't want to read the boring 'inside the writer's mind' stuff ;-)
> 
> I wrote the start and end long before I filled in the middle (when it became a slightly differently toned fic.)
> 
>  ~~Cliffs Notes: the line "Sometimes the sweetest thing about loving someone is knowing when to let go" can apply to both Matt - he lets go of his fears - and Ali. If it applies to Ali, who is he letting go? ;-)~~
> 
> When the actual story was written and finished I decided I wanted the ending to be a bit ambiguous, devoid of the innuendo layer ~~I know, shocking, I normally hide them in all my fics. You just have to know where to look LOL~~ , and I didn't want Aiden "on screen". He was originally though, but just at the end and in a non-speaking part! So while I haven't written this up properly, it's as I wrote it down as I thought it, I hope you like the different picture it paints :-)
> 
> I don't always write notes like this, often I just let the story flow out storyteller style so I don't know how it will end. Luckily?! for you though, this time I did.
> 
> BTW: For those of you that don't know my username is from the Mark Twain quote "Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself". So when I say Paint in my notes, it just means me trying to "paint the fire itself", plus I like to try and layer my stories like paint on a canvas. Small brushstrokes to make the whole.
> 
> =+=
> 
> [Matt's said all he has to say, but Ali's reaction means he becomes thoughtful again]
> 
> White before his eyes, under his fingertips. Matt pours out a little more sugar, playing through it restlessly, intent on his thoughts. He seems outwardly calmer though. More purposeful.
> 
> [How does Aiden get here, does Ali call him? Was he due to arrive anyway?]
> 
> Ali looks up, sees Aiden, so silently gets up and leaves, pressing a hand to Matt's shoulder to give him a squeeze of encouragement. Matt doesn't look up. [Reacts to sound/smell of Aiden approaching?]
> 
> Momentarily nervous Matt doesn't meet Aiden's eyes when he sits down beside him. Continues to play with the sugar, lifts the dispenser/bag again and pours it slowly down so it spills over the length of his held out finger and watches it lie there while the rests flow down onto the table to land in a fresh pool.
> 
> [possible flashback acknowledgment in his mind to Final When We Collide performance, the glitter paper like the falling sugar, truth of him focusing on "seeing white" is actually what was under the white, his fingertips on Aiden's skin behind his neck]
> 
> Then Matt wets his fingertip and presses the sweetness to it, rolling it in the sugar until it becomes white [Paint Aiden's reaction or not?]. Now finally he looks up, holds the finger out to Aiden who meets Matt's eyes [Paint the look?] then opens his mouth.
> 
> [The End]


End file.
